wissel.net

Category Business Singapore
On June 15, 2010 the Straits Times published an article cheekily titled 'G' mail for all govt e-mail. From the article:

" SINGAPORE residents will each get a personal online mailbox in two years' time to receive their mail from the Government and public agencies.

Mail such as tax statements, reminders to renew TV licences and bills for service and conservancy charges will be sent to this Internet mailbox."

I think that is a terrific idea for citizen services and a good example for clever marketing (I'll explain why). In the comments people lambast about stealing of identity, not-another-mailbox and hacking and viruses. I think they all get it wrong. Reading the article a little further we learn: "People can log into the mailbox using their SingPass ID as well as register online to get e-mail and SMS alerts for new mail.". So what exactly is happening here? My take:

• Somebody did some serious thinking how to bring Citizen service to the next level. I like the idea and I hope the implementation is as bold as the idea itself. The OneInbox is the place where all Government - Citizen interaction takes place. Government interaction requires forms, so a classical eMail won't do. Government interaction is confidential so SMTP, POP etc. won't do. Regular users are overwhelmed when it comes to eMail security as encryption and signatures. The typical approach would be to build a G2C portal and let users interact with it. But "Portal and interactions" sounds complicated and scary to non technical people. So the brains behind the initiative call that Portal an Inbox. Everybody understands Inbox.
• It won't be an eMail system - the sentence "register to get eMail and SMS alerts" gives it away. Why on earth would I want an eMail alert for an incoming eMail. So forget about sending a message to Auntie Joanne (that's what the other gMail is for). And that is OK.
• It uses a well established Single SignOn (SingPass). I expect that in a future iteration SingPass will either use Singapore's Smart-ID chip or some biometrics (which is already stored in our ID card records), so it will be better than the arbitrary name/password of other online systems. Also it efficiently allows to click from you Inbox to the specialized applications of the respective ministries.
• The plan seems to allow that government applications deposit just a notification to the inbox or ever surface their entire UI there depending on the readiness of the respective application. This nicely allows for incremental improvement and deeper and deeper integration. In IBM we call such an approach SOA.
• The absence of normal eMail functions is a big security plus. No Viagra or body part size changing message can be used as an attack vector into that inbox. It is strictly public business

Of course questions need to be answered: Is SingPass secure enough, is privacy guaranteed (we don't have privacy laws here, so that actually might not be a topic) and is the user experience well balanced? For my part: I'm happy to gain a single stop for my government dealings.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 8:00 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business Software
Archival often gets confused with backup. The activities are (technically) very similar and invite such a confusion. Both are the action of moving bits from "the place where everybody looks" (the mailbox, the current database, the file share, the intranet etc.) to some other place (a backup tape, a cheaper storage, a CD-ROM /dev/null etc).

Backup is for the sole purpose to keep data available in case the main storage area is no longer available (due to accidental deletion, soft- or hardware problems).
Archival is the removal of data from the "main area" to an "archive area" for later retrieval for historic or compliance reasons. A secondary motive for archival is to remove obsolete or less relevant data from the active work area to improve performance, shorten search time or save on storage in the system hosting the active work area. To confuse matters further: quite often technologies designed for backup are successfully used for archival (e.g. copy data to a removable storage like a tape or optical disk).

In other terms: you don't expect to ever restore a backup unless something went wrong, while accessing an archive can be part of a regular business process. There are a few perceptions about archival that need to be put into perspective:

Archival does not save any storage space!
At least not when you look at all storage across the Enterprise. However it can help saving storage on your active work area (which is most likely the most expensive one) and so help saving storage cost. IMHO the biggest advantage of archival is the reduction of data a user would look for, since the current work area only would contain relevant data. This is also the greatest peril of archival: when data gets archived too early and the archival location turns into yet-another-work-area-to-check. (OK your archive might use a better compression that your life system - but are you sure that is isn't just a backup?)

Archival needs information life cycle management
Every information has a certain life cycle. Like food items information has a "best use before" data (that varies depending on the purpose). It follows roughly the following pattern:

• New: freshly created, might not be relevant yet (e.g. upcoming policy change)
• Current: data supports one or more business processes and is actively used
• Reference: data is no longer actively use, but is regularly required for reports or comparison
• Compliance: data is obsolete but needs to be kept for compliance (e.g. business records in Singapore : 7 years)
• Historic: the data doesn't need to be kept, it doesn't serve any active business process, but might be of historic interest. This state of information is a field of tension between (corporate) lawyers and historians: historians like to keep everything, while lawyers see a potential discovery risk (cost and content) in every piece of data kept. When analyzing the archival policies of any organization one can find out who won this conflict.
• Obsolete: In 2050 really nobody cares how many rolls of toilet paper you bought at what price (while the price volume of toilet paper might still be of historic interest as curiosity how mankind could be so wasteful with resources before they had the self cleaning buttock nano coating)

Data might skip some of the phases. As one might notice I'm speaking about "data" in general. The life cycle applies not only to documents but to all sort of information. Now to have a successful archival strategy the status of information in that life cycle should be explicit known for each piece. Unfortunately this is still the exception rather the rule. Short of an explicit expiry data we make implicit assumptions like "Unless stated otherwise a document in this place expires xx days after last update" or "Unless stated otherwise a document in this place expires xx days after last use". Since usage is much harder to track (if one looks at an information to then figure out that wasn't what she was looking for, an automated system would count that as usage - bad. Or I use the search engine and the search result shows already the information, so I never open the location - document expires being unused - bad) the most prevalent measure is "last update". Some clever verification  cycle asking the owner to extend the validity is needed. But better have a clever one. If that turns into a one-bye-one update exercise nobody will bother. A very good rule engine can help there. Most of the technical troubles (short of broken equipment) you might experience with archival are rooted in strategic (mis-)decisions.

What's your Retention/Archival policy?

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 4:07 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Business
Every CIO's office is challenged with the amount of computing freedom it should allow its corporate users. Thus the spectrum reaches from Stalinist: "We tell you what bios version and revision your hardware has and what tie you have to wear before you can login" to Peacenik "Everything is connected, the universe will guide you in the selection of hard- and software". As we all no extremes usually don't yield the best results and we should stay on the Middle Path. I like the approach IBM is taking here, which I would encourage to copy. IBM has clear guidelines about workstation security. Any device connecting to IBM's internal network or processing IBM data must comply. We have tools that check compliance and help users to adjust if there are problems and to escalate them if they don't get fixed. The CIO's office maintains a list of approved software. This software comes in three flavors: software that is part of our standard image, software that can be installed when needed and comes with full support (you can call the help desk and open a trouble ticket) and software provided as-is (no trouble ticket, but discussion forums and user self help). Installation is provided from an integrated tool in IBM's w3 intranet. You pick your software from the list and the rest is fully automated. After going through a briefing we also can use OpenSource software as we deem fit (within the margins set in that briefing).
The CIO's office doesn't prescribe the hardware. You can use you own computer - what an increasing number of IBMers do when switching to a Mac. Of course most IBMers will use a Thinkpad that is provided in a set of standard variations (X series, T series or W series).
After all IBM is a technology company, so how do we handle all the latest and greatest software? Since the CIO needs to provide full support for official software and upgrading a 400k strong workforce isn't done in an afternoon, something bridging that gap was needed. So about five years ago IBM created the Technology Adoption Program. In the TAP program IBM's own latest and greatest software is available. But it is not only software you find (or will find) in IBM's price list, but innovations that have been created for internal use. As a matter of fact a huge number of TAP innovations are created by IBMers not working in software development. TAP allows everybody to contribute, try and vote. Successful tools graduate one day from TAP to the CIO's official supported list. While you find software from all IBM software brands here, I mostly pay attention to Lotus stuff. We have heaps of plug-ins, a modified mail template, Notes 8.5.2, SUT etc.
One can also find the IBM Open Client here. For Linux users we have 3 levels. IBM maintains their own internal software sources and we have stable, beta and experimental. So based on one's taste for novelty vs. security any of the three can be picked (Easy to guess which one I picked). Using a TAP approach has a clear set of advantages:

• The CIO's office can evaluate software on a broader basis
• Users with low risk tolerance can stay with well established fully internally supported software
• User who like new stuff can be provided with the latest and greatest without having to make an enterprise wide commitment
• Innovation can be fostered. With TAP in place any piece of software becomes visible to the enterprise at large. Also internal contributions (e.g. we have corporate templates on TAP) can easily be shared.
• Better control: TAP allows a liberal look-down: You want to use this or that? No problem, we put it on tap. No other stuff please.

Of course funding and acquisition of licences need to be handled by TAP, but that's a different story for another time. If you ask nicely IBM will help you to adopt your own TAP. As usual: YMMV.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 1:34 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Fellow IBMer Stefan tweets about a PC Welt article in German titled eMail madness - these are the worst sins in eMail. The article makes an interesting read (Google translate). What I found remarkable is that the author references basic communication theory in the beginning citing the four qualities any communication carries: factual content, relationship, self statement and plea. I learned about these qualities in the works of Schulz von Thun during communication training many years ago. Here are the 7 sins in summary:

1. Subject sin: The subject line is the one line advertisement of your eMail content. If it isn't related to your content or too general you and your receipients won't understand or later on find it. Subject and content need to match. Variations of this sin: pack too many information into one eMail (instead of separate topics), have a blank subject or recycle an old message with a totally unrelated subject line
2. Chain sin: Instead of summarizing the current status the receipent is left with sniffing through a whole chain of messages in the body field. The sin also carries the risk of information leaks: if you add new receipients to the chain they might gain access to information not inteded for them.
3. Ping Pong eMails sin: a rapid sequence of emails between 2 people (and a large audience in the CC list). eMail is inherently asynchronous. If a conversation is needed, the participants should use a phone or a chat client.
4. Avoidance sin: eMails are suitable for notifications and information. They make a poor tool for leadership and decision making - especially when there is dissent what the right course of action is. So using eMails to ask people to do unpleasant actions or announce decisions can be easily used to avoid responsibility, the responsibility to make decisions with the team and based on facts, evidence and leadership
5. Mobile Messaging sin: Using a mobile messaging client mostly cuts the participant off the mail chain, so (s)he might not be fully informed. Only really tough users would download and read any attachments. The (compared to a proper keyboard and regular screen) poor usability leads to very short context deprived eMails, stuff like: "go for it" or "Approved". They leave you wondering what this is all about
6. SMS sin: S stands for short, so don't try to communicate anything more complex than "the train is 30 min late" or "pls. call urgently regarding Project XYZ"
7. Useless guidelines sin: The intranet has eMail guidlines, but nobody cares since they follow the senior execs who are happy sinners. If you want things to change you need to be a role model

You could easily add a few more: the "endless long CC list" sin, the "reply with unchanged attachment" sin, the "everything comes with a return receipt sin" or the "you have to answer in 5 minutes expecation" sin. What are your favorite eMail sins?

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 7:09 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Business
Charlene Li of Forrester research outlines six items to constitute a corporate blogging policy:

1. Make it clear that the views expressed in the blog are yours alone and do not necessarily represent the views of your employer.
2. Respect the company’s confidentiality and proprietary information.
3. Ask your manager if you have any questions about what is appropriate to include in your blog.
4. Be respectful to the company, employees, customers, partners, and competitors.
5. Understand when the company asks that topics not be discussed for confidentiality or legal compliance reasons.
6. Ensure that your blogging activity does not interfere with your work commitments.

The Wiki page contains a set of links to examples of published corporate policies including IBM's Social Computing guidelines

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 2:06 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Michael Sampson, teamwork expert, points us to an insight from Nicholas Bate about team performance

Of course good presentations help to show off the good work. Until then focus on7 pillars and clarity.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 4:11 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Business
The phone rings.

He: Hello this is [name changed to protect the innocent] from [insert a big bank]. Can I speak to Mr. Stephan?

Me: Hello there, Stephan speaking

He: This is regarding [pretty usual transaction]

Me: OK

He: Let me ask you some questions to establish your identity

Me: OK

He: What is your account # and [secret question about pets, sports, cities, keywords - you know]

Me: Ah - why would I tell you that?

He: To establish your identity

Me: You called my mobile, so? How should I know you are from the bank

He: Sir I work for [insert a big bank]

Me: Yeah, how should I know that you are who you claim, you not even show a number

He: But I have to establish your identity

Me: And I need to know who you are. I've been burned once with stolen bank data

He: Can I know your account number now

Me: How can I trust you? Don't get me wrong, it is not personal, just security concerns

He: But I work for [insert a big bank]

Me: How would I know. You call out of the blue, with no number in the display, you could be anybody

He: We are not getting anywhere

Me: Right. Why don't I call you back?

He: Uhm - I don't have a callback number

Me: There you go (of course THAT part of the bank call centre is different from the part that takes in calls)

He (sounding desperate since I'm spoiling the average customer handling time): OK Sir, it is about [type of transaction] filed [date] and [value]. You used Internet banking last at [DateAndTime]

Me (feeling very sorry for the guy, assessing the risk: could he have obtained this information in a scam?): OK, I still don't trust you, but here we go. (passing ID information)

(This is actually a very risky behaviour. The very essence of scamming is to obtain a piece of information and use it against the victim to pretend you are a trusted party. E.g. Using a stolen logo is just the simples form of it. Kevin Mitnick was particularly good at Social Engineering, read for yourself. )

He: There is a signature missing

Me: Perfect, I wanted to cancel that transaction anyway.

He: So I cancel for you, have a great day.

Me: Bye! (taking mental note to change the ID information)

What is [insert a big bank] thinking? Disclosing a financial transaction to a stranger (ok the stranger in possession of the customer's hand phone) and expecting customers to blindly trust a caller. Such behaviour invites systematic scamming.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 2:41 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
The Harvard Business Review has an interesting entry titled The Builders' Manifesto. It is a critical review of leadership and the fact, that we don't need leaders but builders. In the post the author Umair Haque is applying 10 principles to bosses, leaders and builders:

1. The boss drives group members; the leader coaches them. The Builder learns from them.
2. The boss depends upon authority; the leader on good will. The Builder depends on good.
3. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The Builder is inspired — by changing the world.
4. The boss says "I"; the leader says "we". The Builder says "all" — people, communities, and society.
5. The boss assigns the task, the leader sets the pace. The Builder sees the outcome.
6. The boss says, "Get there on time;" the leader gets there ahead of time. The Builder makes sure "getting there" matters.
7. The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The Builder prevents the breakdown.
8. The boss knows how; the leader shows how. The Builder shows why.
9. The boss makes work a drudgery; the leader makes work a game. The Builder organizes love, not work.
10. The boss says, "Go;" the leader says, "Let's go." The Builder says: "come."

Go read The Builders' Manifesto.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 8:04 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Business
One of my invaluable travel companions is a DLink Travel Router DWL-G730A. Plugging it into the hotel room internet wire frees me up to sit wherever I like instead of being glued to the desk (sitting in the bathtub with water still isn't recommended for laptop use). When it stopped working I felt a sense of urgency to get it fixed. So I gave the D-Link Hotline a call to get a RMA#. To my surprise they said: just drop by at the service centre and we will take care of you (sending things around isn't usual on our small island, so expecting a customer to drop by a service centre is absolute reasonable here). So I went there expecting all sorts of bureaucracy and hu-ha since I didn't have the receipt for that router anymore. The support representative just asked me to fill in contact details and serial# and indicated she would run a quick tests, I should be patient for a few minutes. Less than 5 minutes later she returned, stating that one of the test had failed. Then she handed me a shrink-wrapped new router, let me sign that I got it in return for the borked one and off I went.
Well done DLINK!

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 4:52 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
On my last entry I got a comment, that your blog has been selected for the exclusive list of 100 IBM blogs. While I like flattery, it at the same time makes me suspicious. After all there are way more than 100 IBM blogs. They obviously did some homework, since on my page there was an ad suggesting to loose stomach fat, a topic I'm struggling with <g> The badge they suggest to display on my blog seems harmless enough (flat image link, no JavaScript goodies. Anybody encountered them? What are they up to?

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 1:12 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category Business
I'm a customer of a number of banks. HSBC being one of them. I also hardly visit any bank branches. I do my business online. I like HSBC's site. It is easy to use and fully functional (Short of a glitch that doesn't allow to set a date for all type of transactions). In recent years all the banks have added additional security to their online login by requiring a security token besides your user name and password. This token is either generated by a little gadget or send via SMS to your mobile phone. HSBC choose the first option (while some smarter banks actually let you choose what option you like). The token vendor they picked seems to be on the cheap site and with 99% probability the devices' internal clock will get out of sync with the security server (about every 2-3 month), so you can't login. A call to the help-desk fixes that, but it takes 3-4 hours.
In other words: you can't depend on the availability of HSBC Internet banking when you need or want it. I chatted a little with the help desk guy who was very pleasant to talk to and highlighted that this problem dents HSBC's reputation. So I asked if I'm just dumb out of luck or the problem is widespread. He admitted, that *all* HSBC Internet banking customers will experience that type of problem (Guess that's why there was a specific option in the voice menu just for that). I'm now seriously considering to close my account since I'm not amused. All other bank tokens I use(d) never fail(ed).
Note to HSBC: Fix the problem or loose customers

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 9:58 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Business
(Technical) professionals are caught in an interesting dilemma. We are asked to contribute to events, customer meeting or internal presentations because we know a lot about a topic. We are supposed to transfer this wealth of knowledge to our customers, audience and participants. We love to show [off] our knowledge. In lucky places like Lotusphere this works well. For everywhere else however human attention span, especially in a crowd, is severely limited. Ten minutes is all you got. One-Zero minutes. After 10 minutes the crowd moves on. If you are lucky - or smart - the crowd moves on to your next topic (like the Lotusphere speed geeking sessions <g>).
But where do that 10 minutes come from? The present moment is 3 seconds and attention spans are reported from 3-20 min. I picked the 10 minutes rule from the book Brain Rules after having seen it in a number of places. So if 10 minutes is all you got, how to fill the remaining 35-50 minutes your are given to present? The conclusion is simple: you have to deliver a new presentation every 10 minutes. That doesn't mean you have to pull a new slide deck out of your presentation software or start with your introduction. You just have to introduce a new tiger every 600 seconds (because that is what our brains are watching out for anyway - and they are not too far in my part of the world). Loaded with technical details and deep knowledge limiting ourself to 5 big ideas forms a nice challenge. The solution is to pack all the details into the umbrella of an idea. You need to tell your audience upfront what it is, so your audience doesn't get lost in the details (believe me *nobody* is interested in your setup screens or installation prompts, skip them). Just ask the preacher at [insert-favorite-place-of-worship] how a sermon gets delivered: "Who doesn't walk in the light of [insert-subject-of-worship-here] will go to hell. To hell you will go because [insert-long-list-of-misdeeds]. But there is hope, [insert-subject-of-worship] offers salvation... ". While you don't need to summon Angels and Demons to make your point you can learn from the structure:

1. Summarize your statement
2. Expand the problem challenge at hand
3. Offer the solutions
4. Expand the solution
5. Tie back to your summary

The above structure is part of your presentation body. It is wrapped into an introduction in front as well as a preliminary conclusion Q & A session and final conclusion at the end. This is called a "classical" speech structure (anybody wants to claim presentations are not speeches?). One of the best investment you can make is LeeAundra Temescu's "The Contrary Public Speaker" eBook (also available as audio-book). Helped me to score high even deep in "enemy territory". As LeeAundra urges: keep your slide decks light. I second that and add: get ZEN inspiration and get extreme.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 2:44 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
In the current economic condition and with the impending implosion of Satyam the frequency of resumes ending up in my mailbox has sharply increased. Typically now I get requests from people between 5 and 15 years of experience, all with completed university degrees and all making the same basic mistake. Here a sample:
Hi
I am [Name removed to prevent embarrassment] with xx years of experience in IT Industry.
I request you to consider me as candidate for a suitable opening in your company.
Please find my resume attached
Regards
[Name]

So what's wrong with that? Everybody likes to have a good job. Here we go:

1. I was on the BCC list. My spam filter had sorted it out.
   Advice: Put in that little effort and send individual emails. If a candidate isn't putting effort for the most important thing in his business (his own job), I can conclude, that he won't go the extra mile when working for me.
2. No personal salutation.
   Advice: The Internet is an open book. There are phone lines. Hiring managers have names and they like to be properly addressed.
3. Why did he write to me? I'm not working in the "IT Industry" (I guess my email came from an IBM business partner list, an outdated one). I work in a very specific niche: Craftsmanship around IBM's collaborative products.
   Advice: State and be very specific why you write to a specific company. Show that you did your homework and already know about the company. If you don't know what to say: at least state how the vision/mission/value statement resonates with you. This creates a feeling of "he is family" in the hiring manager.
4. No statement of contribution.
   Advice: If I hire you I want to know what I get. Yes I can read the attached CV, but I won't if I'm not convinced it is worth my time. So sum it up: managed projects in a CMMI5 certified company worth xxx dollars on time and cost. Passionate about [state your technology passion]. Will fit into [part of my organization, you have researched that isn't it?]
5. How should I know what position suits him?
   Advice: I know that feeling: first get a job and then see how to get into the position you like to do. But that's a bad idea. State clearly what you are good at, so it is easier for me to consider you. If you have praised my company enough you can state, that you also would consider a position that leads you to your desired role.
6. Resume formatting careless, no photo.
7. Resume format in MS-Word to an IBM Business Partner company. So you are not following what IBM is talking about? At least PDF would make sense. (I know that is controversial, but DOC isn't an ISO standard. ODF, DocX (eventually) and PDF are.
8. No web presence.
   : Do good and talk about it. If you don't have a blog at least show me where you contribute online (on OpenNTF, Notes.net, JavaRanch.com). If you don't use online resources and at least occasionally contributed back.... in what century do you work?
9. No chat. How can I ask you a quick question? Skype, GTalk, Yahoo are free.

Get yourself one or the other good guide to land a job and try again.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 11:08 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Category Business
If I recall correctly HTML has been proposed and standardized 15 years ago. It includes the possibility to wrap a link around an image tag. Nevertheless a patent troll from Singapore managed to get the combination of image and link patented. And I though April fools was weeks ago. While I'm not a legal expert, I would say showing prior art shouldn't be a big problem. Nevertheless the internet sites are buzzing.
What could be the motives of such a patent claim? The old legal wisdom stands even in our times: "Dolo petit quid rediturum est". Could it be lack of dilligence? Could it be misled judgement of prior art? Of course nobody would propose sinister motives like "Find enough idiots who pay up and run" since that for sure would lead to a defamation suit, a popular past time in our part of the world. So we keep wondering what this is all about!

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 1:10 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Occasionally I follow spam links to see what they are pouching for. I skip the typical suggestions to increase size or performance of body parts or make a fortune in Nigeria. Lately I've seen quite some messages that suggested a new easy way to generate a lifelong income. Interested in the delusion I had a look. It turns out, that Global Domains International created a Pyramid selling scheme multi level marketing scheme to pouch 10$/month .ws web addresses with personal hosting.
I strongly disdain such schemes since they exploit social connections in connection with delusional hope for business gains. Seems like the regular .ws registration business didn't work that well. I haven't come across any organization actually using .ws pages other than protecting their trademarks. Do I miss a hot new development or is .ws just the answer to a question nobody ever asked?

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 7:13 PM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Business
I do believe in skillfulness, I do believe in mastery. I admire true craftsmen and their work results. The constant strive for perfection amazes me. So naturally I tend to be puzzled meeting people who a comfortably ignorant. Catching up with reading during the year-end holiday made me discover the reasons behind that:

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (Charles Darvin)

This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect (and/or Lage Wobegon effect). It more or less explains why ignorance is so hard to combat:

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.

(See the WIkipedia article for a complete discussion.)

So are we stuck with victims of the Peter principle? Luckily the messrs Dunning & Kruger offer a solution:

• Incompetent individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level.

Seems like Kathy is right, right and right.

It helps to have the right mindset.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 8:00 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Business
Slashdot pointed to an article in the Washington Post. It reported, that John Thorne, a senior vice president of Verizon accuses the internet companies to have a free ride on their networks and wants to charge them for access. I'm not quite sure if an intoxicating substance, panic or greed made him utter this nonsense. If he bothers to read his own broadband subscription contracts: his subscribers pay, so they can reach all this sites. So Google, Yahoo and the like a the single big reason why the can sell broadband in the first place. Sounds like a soccer club who wants to charge the players for using the stadium after they sold all the tickets to fans who want to see them playing.
I don't know how lobbying and law-making works in the US, but if Verizon gets its way, it could throw the Internet in the US back for years. Anyway Google doesn't seem to sit idle, they have proven, that they can roll-out free WIFI backed access quite fast.
As the old Chinese curse nicely states: "May you live in interesting times".

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 11:33 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Jack Dausman started the dialogue with a post mentioning that 60% of the IT workers are ready to move one. Ben Pole, Kevin Pettitt and Jonathan Walkup chipped in. Of course I have my 2c to add to it.
I agree with Jack on training as key success factor as well with Ben on a need to shift the perspective from cost to benefit. I also liked the remarks about semi competent techies defending their turf. There is another dimension and that is communication.
We geeks tend to communicate in terms like: CPU, Uptime, Bandwidth, Storage, Access, Network etc. Managers tend to speak about money, corporate values, business development, key performance indicators and revenue-cost ratios. Both sides blame the other, that they speak in tongues, don't listen and don't understand. One problem is surly, that a lot of managers can't manage, so they resort to micro management (a.k.a. not trusting the techies due to a lack of people skills).
What can be done? First of all, when you move on you will take all your problems with you, so the solution is to solve your part first before moving on. There a several dimensions you can have a look. If you firmly think, that you know what is right, but you are not in charge, some lateral leadership could help. And while you are on it, beef up your negotiation skills. We became geeks because we found technology much more fascinating than business and numbers, however we need to translate our thinking into management compatible statements of cost and value. In a recent conversation a potential client was complaining our proposal was to expensive, so we ran the numbers:
"OK we can skip the validation routines, that would shave 2k from our price. But in return about 10% of the forms would have errors. To clarify them 2 engineers in two countries need to get online and discuss (if they discover them at all). That takes half an hour, given your internal rates for 2 engineers, that is about 0.2k. We don't calculate time for delays or damage for undiscovered errors. Your estimate is about 1000-1500 approvals / year, so the cost for saving 2k would be about 20-30k/year".
Suddenly they did understand. Of course it is very painful to break down everything we do into value prepositions. But it is not that difficult. We generally can set two types of cost: investment for improved productivity, speed, revenue and investment to avoid damage or higher cost. So the question is: how much do we spend on other things if we don't do that and how much will it cost and how likely will disaster strike. Once we make things measurable, even if the benchmarks are rather blurry, we find common ground with the management to negotiate. Once you master the skill and the situation doesn't improve (because you got one of them) it is time to move on. You new company will appreciate your ability to "speak management".  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 10:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Business
Step 1: Create a project with an incredible tight deadline and hire him as a subcontractor
Step 2: make sure access to internal resources is limited below agreed threshold
Step 3: let him re-engineer an application with hidden gems of bad engineering
Step 4: ask him to work weekends and public holidays clocking in >100h in 8 days
Step 5: don't communicate management decisions in time  
Step 6: tell him that the customer likes the code he creates
Step 7: tell him, that you won't compensate for extra effort

But maybe I wake up, Friday the 13th is gone and everything is a bad dream.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 1:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Business
A hot topic on the 2005 Asia eGovernment Summit was corruption. All government officials present (Singapore didn't send one) admitted, that it is a huge problem in their respective country. One representative from the Philippines shared how they use eGovernment to curb bribery. Citizen in the Philippines can (like in many other countries) submit their tax declaration online. Not seeing a tax collector face to face eliminates the opportunity to bribe him. They also run an anonymous website, that is directly linked to the government fraud fighting agency. If you are a danger seeker - they have job openings.
In Singapore corruption is not a problem. The few cases that pop up are swiftly dealt with and end up with free accommodation in bar filtered air. When having a closer look at this zero tolerance policy you will notice, that it is only the final brick in the dam that stops corruption. The first layer here is a British style administration, that has been perfected by the Singapore Chinese, the second is the pay of the civil servants, that enables a decent life (for a minister that would be a decent 1M SGD). So it is easy to successfully take the moral high ground.
The picture becomes very different when you look in the surrounding countries. We had some good discussions and found, that you need to differentiate what exactly is happening when money changes hands. In most emerging countries taking a bribe supplements the meagre pay of a public servant, who's paycheck is growing much slower than the money earned in the private sector. Secondly especially in South-East Asia there is a culture to give presents when visiting each other. This presents are an expression of appreciation and are not seen as a bribe (unless you take the moral high ground). So drawing the line becomes more difficult. When you want to classify bribes you could distinguish three levels (I like that scheme, since it provides hooks how to handle them and it was my idea):
First a bribes that speed up a process, that would happen anyway. From what I have heard, that is actually the bulk of bribes given. Give a little fee to the officer and your visa application doesn't take four weeks but two, give a little more and it will be done in three days.
The second type are bribes to get an officer to do what he is supposed to so but threatens to procrastinate. This is basically public service blackmail.
The third type are bribes to achieve a result that is illegal or violates regulations and bylaws (most rampant in construction industry and in tender processes).
I personally consider the first type relative harmless by itself, but damaging since it lowers the shy to do the two other types as well. The Chinese came up with a clever scheme in their embassies to remove that "token to speed up the application". They made it official: there are different fees to be paid for different speeds of your application processing. You get a official formal receipt. It is kind of a service level agreement. This way there is no wiggling room for the officers to ask extra "speed money". Once this type of bribes has dried up, it becomes easier to get tough on the other both types.
To curb the procrastination black mail transparency and business process modelling can be the weapon of choice: let citizens know how long a process should take (with a given bandwidth) and provide an escalation path if deadlines are not met. Sounds easy but is tricky to implement, since government processes tend to be rather blurry.
For the last type then a zero tolerance policy with established graft fighting measures can help. However every coin has two sides. One typical method are tender requirements for expenditures exceeding a certain size. There is an incredible amount of money wasted for tender preparation since in a median cut you only win 2-5% of tenders you work on... and that project have to recover your opportunity cost, so they get more expensive. So the goal of fighting corruption sometimes clashes with the mandate to use resources efficiently.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 10:45 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
On Tuesday the "2005 eGovernment Asia" conference will begin in Beijing. I'm invited as a speaker, so I leave Singapore tonight. Writing this, I'm actually sitting in the departure hall of Changi Airport using their free network access. Cable bound internet is free, wireless internet is charged by Starhub. I find, that the hour between check-in and boarding is best spend blogging, sending overdue emails and clean-up in-boxes.
I had the last run on my presentation with the best of my wifes before I left and she corrected some rather embarrassing typos in my Chinese. I'm trying to tell a story rather to "bullet-shoot" my audience (Oscon Identity 2.0 somehow set a new standard). Luckily one of the bloggers (sorry can't recall who) recommended iStockphoto.com for great pictures, so good quality graphics were affordable.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 12:53 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Routinely checking my credit card account I found a deduction in Thai Bath. I've not been in Thailand for a year. So I traced the merchant who turns out to be a Thai online payment service (similar to PayPal in the US). Someone had used my Credit Card to buy web hosting (you can guess for what purpose). I immediately called my credit card company to terminate the card only to learn, that the fraudsters have maxed out my credit line within 3 days.
Since they haven't got the merchant details for the other transactions I can't file the dispute, effectively cutting me off of credit card use for one to two weeks. What amused me: the dispute can't be filed online (there I only can view my statement), but needs a fax form to be processed. Seems there is some eBusiness opportunity.
The Thai payment operator was more swift. Within 5 hours (on a Sunday!) they cancelled the transaction and issued a refund (that will take a day to arrive through Visa).
I'm quite restrictive using my credit card online, however I travel a bit in the region where I use it in hotels. I would like to know if I became victim of a local fraud or one of the beneficiaries of the recent US data losses.
Definitely I'm p***d.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (4) |      

Category Business
Found the post Incompetence Considered Harmful on a weblog I recently added. It reminded me on one of my favourite quotes: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance", which is commonly attributed to Derek Bok (a former Harvard president). The Blog mentioned a research paper and I had a look. The most stunning conclusion: if you are clueless you not even can appreciate a sound solution or distinguish cream from crap.
It seems to me, that's the reason why a lot of sales people companies don't like experts from the field of the products or services they offer, since they would know high quality. Of course unless they made quality (result quality, not process quality) their core value.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 3:50 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Seems I'm becoming more and more a full citizen of Singapore (No it's not the Singlish lah). My indicator of home town is: do I bump into people I know. Yesterday at the food court I bumped into my friend Alvin Lee. We had a chat about team, organisation and mental models. Alvin does team building and motivation training. We found that two popular acronyms KISS and GIGO are related.  KISS stands for Keep it simple stupid and GIGO for Garbage In Garbage Out.
During our chat we realized that it should be KISS and GISS. "Keep Incoming Shit Short "and "Garbage In Shit Sticks". When you keep your Garbage In to long it turns into shit. And then you might need to go for colon cleansing. Your mind rather might need GTD.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 10:57 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
The most stunning concept in Orwell's 1984 was NewSpeak: the redefinition of terms to eliminate concepts. Can you think freedom if there is no word for it?
I recently worked with the different quality initiatives ISO9000, EfQM, CMMI. While I think the initiatives have good value for their purpose, they all conduct NewSpeek when talking about quality. Funny aspect: the all see it in the same way.
Quality in their sense are repeatable constant outcomes/results, that are achieved with constant and repeatable processes. While repeatable results are important for conducting sustainable business I resent to call it quality. Put it boldly: My friend runs a French Fine Dining. When the cook had a bad day it is so so, when he has a good day, you're in heaven. On the other hand: walk into an average Mac Donald's anywhere on this planet. You can expect and will receive a Big Mac that tastes the same for 20+ years. From a quality management point of view Mac Donald's is the champion. However if I ask my taste buds, even the worst mood of my French cook produces food with far superior quality.
This results is a subconscious tension for all quality people: since the (process) quality definition doesn't match the layman's understanding of quality a lot of quality initiatives are perceived as management fads; perceptions lay the foundation for results, so TQM often goes nowhere.

Anybody pick up the challenge and come up with a good term instead of newspeaking quality?  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 11:45 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
As you probably have heard Interactive Corp. bought AskJeeves for a staggering 1.85B USD. This looks like a lot of money. However taking a closer look shows a quite different picture. IACI is paying in stocks, so basically they print the money for the buyover. So how much is the deal REALLY worth? Let us try an inverse calculation.
Assumption: The value of Interactive Corp doesn't change. And if you look at the stock price, it actually was going down. The true market value of a stock are the number of shared that are publicly traded. The highest traded volume of IACI (in the last 12 month) was 32M shares. With the current market capitalisation of 15B this is about 5% of the outstanding shares.Let us assume, that the percentage of publicly traded shares is about 4 times of that. Why would one want to count the publicly traded shares only? The idea is: the market can't take in any amount of shares, so demand and supply regulate not only price but also volume. If stocks are thrown on the market in large numbers the price would suffer. Therefore the sellable stocks represent the true value. Because even if something has a stellar price tag, if one can't sell it, it's worthless. I would call that "capital in market". In our case the capital in market  is about 3B. So the new shares are worth not 1.85B but 370M. Suddenly the deal looks much more reasonable.
I'm sure I've violated any established economic calculation, however I think it's not beyond reason.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 12:09 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
This is hillarious. I wish I could get my English that straigt. In German I practised that reading Carl Popper and putting Wolf Schneider's advise to work.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 5:01 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
It is not brand new in the book stores. However Pfeffer and Sutton provide very valuable insights into corporate dysfunction and how to fix them.

The contents touches on all areas where knowledge isn't put into action and why. My personal favorites are "Memory as a substitute for thinking" and "When fear prevents acting on knowlege". But read for yourself:
(1) Knowling "What" to Do Is Not Enough
(2) When Talk Substitutes for Action
(3) When Memory Is a SAubstitute for Thinking
(4) When Fear Prevents Acting on Knowledge
(5) When Measurement Obstructs Good Judgement
(6) When Internal Competition Turns Friends into Enemies
(7) Firms That Surmount the Knowling-Doing Gap
(8) Turning Knowledge into Action

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:20 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
I talk a lot to HR managers over here (and head hunters). They all emphasis the importance of the degrees you hold. Yes it's plural of degree they talk about. Even if it is 20+ years ago, to land a job here you must have a bunch of them, at least in this part of the world.
So I asked how much of the really important degrees do they see landing on their desks:

• Masters in "Getting Things Done"
• Phd in "Recovering from Failure"
• Certificate in "Constant Self Improvement"
• Advanced Diploma in "Motivation and Leadership"
• Diploma in "Taking Risk and Responsibility"
• Bachelor of Arts in "Vision, Creativity and Stamina"

So we have quite a double standard: high expectations on paper and so so performance in practice. This gives me quite a head ache to communicate, that there can be all this qualities.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 6:45 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
It is amazing how some business behaviours are universal all over the planet. We all know how well Indian private companies are repudiated for their IT (offshoring) skills. However the public sector seems to follow the same "fate" as in other places. The Hindu Business Line reports, that Mumbai Customs has screwed up their EDI project. Welcome to the club. Currently the Germans seem to lead the club with "Toll Collect", "Harz IV" and "Gesundheitskarte".
Can somebody dispatch some experts from Bangalore to Mumbai (or Bombay as it was called long before)?  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 11:04 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business

One night in Bangkok can make a strong man humble.... A week exhibiting on the Bangkok ICT Expo 2004 too! It was an interesting experience to find my way around in a place where European language knowledge is limited and the road signs are in an alphabet, that I don't understand. About 170000 visitors stopped by at the exhibition, ranging from high profile corporate officers to school classes.
On Sunday we had a few hours to look around in Bangkok Central and we visited "Wat Pho Temple". There you can meet Buddha statues in all shapes, positions and sizes. The biggest of them is in a building build around it: 15m high and over 45m long.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 3:38 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
The Arkgroup is conducting the eMail Management Conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel Singapore 20-22 July 2004. I will present the opening topic "Are You Buried Under the eMail Avalanche?" on Tuesday. On Thursday I conduct the workshop "How to Write an Effective e(Mail) Policy". Seems my past at a law school comes in handy right now. I'm curious how the conference will be.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 4:04 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
The recent issue (May 8th 2004) of Economist features an article that looks at companies as if they were human beings. The view is not new. Enterprises have the same status as people in court for a long time already. What is different in the article is the viewpoint. It is not legal or economical, it is psychological.
And that view is quite nasty. A natural person exposing this type of behaviour would be locked away, under heavy medication and subject to emergency counselling. While the findings are particularity scary, there is hope. By applying the psychological view we could tap into the experience how asocial psychopathic individuals can be dealt with. It also would help to define what constitutes a valuable member of society.
You then can apply the basics of the Maslov pyramid and define the framework of future corporate development: survival and growth, care for the own kin, contribution to the community, self actualisation and finally spiritual development.
It looks, as of today, most corporations are stuck on the survival level and not even care for there own kin (read: customers, employees, suppliers) not to talk about thinking of the community (read: the public, the environment).
Sigmund Freud once stated "Man is a beast and needs to be tamed". Thus the question arises how to tame the enterprises?

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Business

After a long time I'm back to Europe. When I left Singapore to visit some new clients, I made the wish to see plenty of snow. Now I'm in Fuessen (the town where Schloss Neu Schwanstein a.k.a. Mad Kings Castle is located) and got plenty of snow. We have the annual developer meeting of UMsys. We are located in Schloss Hopferau, next to the garage where Konrad Zuse build the first computer ever. (At that time the Germans were very good in inventing stuff, but lousy to make it a economic success).
Tonight we'll go and have a visit to a mountain hut, get drunk and have a night slide back to the castle.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 5:16 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Category Business
Can't beat sombody in an argument? Need to reverse the course of a management decission? Nothing more easy than that! Use out-of-context quotes. Maybe since I went to law school and my late dad, a lawyer himself. preached the virtue of context, I'm used to look for the sentences before and after. This comes in handy when reading software manuals and contract...
Want to get startet? Here are my favorite OOC:
"There is no god!" The Bible
"Mens sana in corpore sano" (lat.) Iuvenal, a 2nd century Roman poet (=A healthy mind in a healty body).
... the answers in "Read More..."

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 1:00 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Business
Had a nice chat with a local HR manager. She complained that a lot of workers simply don't show up after signing their contracts.

We did a little analysis (Systems thinking to be precise) and tada we found a culprit: "We regret that only short-listed candidates will be notified", the standard sentence under each (print and on-line) job-ad.

So how?

You leave Job-Seekers in the dark about the job. So they need to guess if the position is still open or they can move on. So if you offer the B-Job and the company with the A-job is slower than you, you will always loose out.

Solution: Acknowledge the receipt of an application and send out status updates including when the seeker is out (short-listing, position closed). Doesn't cost much (just an email) and tackles the problem (in the long run). It is also a good idea to ask for permission to store the profile, so your HR department can build a little head hunting database of their own.  

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 2:00 AM Location Singapore | Permalink | Comments (0) |